Sunday Snippet: The Snows of Windroven (Amid the Winter Snow) by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted December 10, 2017 by Una in Sunday Snippet Tags: , , , , ,

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 About the Book

The Snows of Windroven (from the anthology Amid the Winter Snow)   
Author:  Jeffe Kennedy
Publisher:   Brightlynx Publishing
Released:  2017
Genre:  Fantasy/Romance
Author contact links:   Facebook, Goodreads, SFF Seven blog,Twitter, Website
Purchase links:  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords
REVIEW TO COME

Snippet:

Ami shook her head, hair catching the light like living flame. “I’ve really tried to give up feeling sorry for myself, as I know I’m blessed and should be grateful, but sometimes this beauty feels more like a curse, like people only see the pretty exterior and don’t see me.” She glared at me, defying me to argue with her.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and she huffed out an exasperated sound.

“The point is, Ash, that it’s not enough for you to close your eyes. I need you to see me.”

“I see you,” I replied, my whisper harsh as the ravens calling in the trees.

Her face crumpled a little and she looked down, worrying her fingers together, pale with chill as she’d taken off her gloves to tend me. “Do you? Sometimes I don’t think you do. I know it’s… difficult for you to be with me, even though you love me.”

“I do love you, Amelia. I love you more than my own life.”

She glanced up at me again, her face wet with renewed tears, and she smiled through them. “I know you do. And I love you—but it’s not enough, is it? I know you’re not happy.”

“Maybe I’m just not a happy person,” I offered.

“Is that all?” She searched my face. “Be honest with me, because I know there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in your head that you don’t share with me and that’s fine—” She held up a hand when I tried to speak, then pulled her gloves from her pocket and yanked them on. “Really, I’m fine with that. I’ve reconciled myself to it because if you wanted to let me in, you would. The thing is, you clearly don’t want to. For a while I thought, well that will change, but it hasn’t. If anything, you’re more closed off than ever. And… this isn’t enough for me anymore. Ironically enough, you were the one to open my eyes and make me want more than the fairytale. My marriage with Hugh was a lovely fantasy, and maybe if he’d lived, we would have found something real there once the shine wore off. All I know is that I loved him, and I love you, but love doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t make us good for each other.” She wiped her face and pulled up the hood of her cloak, taking refuge in the deep cowl.

No, I wasn’t good for her. And love was never enough. It hadn’t been enough to save my parents. They’d loved each other, and so my father had stopped looking for Annfwn, and stayed with her, they’d had a baby and raised me together. Then the priests had come for him and burned him at the stake for being a shapeshifting demon. At thirteen, I’d gone to prison. And my mother had died, alone and undefended.

Love never saved anyone, and it couldn’t make me into someone I wasn’t.

Book Blurb:

As the snows fall and hearths burn, four stories of Midwinter beginnings prove that love can fight its way through the chillest night…

 

THE DARKEST MIDNIGHT, by Grace Draven

The mark Jahna Ulfrida was born with has made her a target of the cruel and idle all her life. During the long, crowded festivities of Deyalda, there’s nowhere to escape. Until a handsome stranger promises to teach her to save herself…

 

THE CHOSEN, by Thea Harrison

In her visions, Lily sees two men fighting for her tiny country’s allegiance: the wolf and the tiger, each deadly, each cunning. One will bring Ys chaos and death, one a gentler path—but she’s destined to love whichever she chooses. The midwinter Masque is upon them, and the wolf is at her door…

 

THE STORM, by Elizabeth Hunter

When her soul mate died in a massacre of the half-angelic Irin people, Renata thought she’d never feel happiness again. She’s retreated to the snowy Dolomites to remember her hurts—until determined, irrepressible Maxim arrives to insist on joy, too. And before she can throw him out, they discover a secret the Irin have to know…

 

THE SNOWS OF WINDROVEN, by Jeffe Kennedy

As a blizzard threatens their mountain keep, the new Queen Amelia of the Twelve Kingdoms and her unofficial consort Ash face their own storm. Ash knows a scarred, jumpy ex-convict isn’t the companion his queen needs. But when a surprise attack confines them together in their isolated sanctuary, the feast of midwinter might tempt even Ash into childlike hope…

About the Author:   

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.

Her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. Book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose received a Top Pick Gold and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014. The third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books followed in this world, beginning the spin-off series The Uncharted Realms. Book one in that series, The Pages of the Mind, has also been nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2016 and won RWA’s 2017 RITA® Award. The second book, The Edge of the Blade, released December 27, 2016, and is a PRISM finalist, along with The Pages of the Mind. The next in the series, The Shift of the Tide, will be out in August, 2017. A high fantasy trilogy taking place in The Twelve Kingdoms world is forthcoming from Rebel Base books in 2018.

She also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, and The Forests of Dru. She’s begun releasing a new contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince.

In 2019, St. Martins Press will release the first book, The Orchid Throne, in a new fantasy romance series, The Forgotten Empires.

Her other works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion; an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera; and the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, which includes Going Under, Under His Touch and Under Contract.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.